I’m on vacation in Mexico, it’s a beautiful day, and I’ve got a(someone else’s) story to tell anyway.

You see, I was having breakfast with my wife in our vacation beach town in Mexico this morning when I hear a terrible tale about a rude and abusive flight attendant on a United Airlines morning flight out of Houston this very day, December 14, 2014. Though the incident didn’t involve me or anyone I know personally, and has no real impact on my life (Did I mention, I’m on vacation?) other than confirming my decision to stop flying as soon as possible, I think United Airline’s (UAL) executives should know about this story of bad behavior on the part of their flight attendant and the flight attendant should be held to account.

So please, if after reading this story of injustice you also feel moved, tweet it. Put it on your Facebook. Ask your friends to do the same. Let’s see if we can get United Airlines to care, and to actually do something about it. Help me spread the word about this one incident, and see if we can make a difference. Now, here’s the story:

An American named Bill who lives in Mexico part of the year and only flies 2 or 3 times a year, boarded his flight from Houston to Cancun this morning after paying to upgrade his seat to first class. He was assigned seat 3E, and boarded the flight.

He’s sitting in his seat (in a row he’s sat in before while traveling with his wife, so he’s really happy about it!), minding his own business, looking forward to getting back to Mexico and his wife. Not a care in the world. Flight attendant approaches.

She says (and this is how it was told to me), “You have to move to row 5.” “No,” he says. “This is my assigned seat.” She says, “You have to move because I’m telling you to do so.” She gives him no other reason, doesn’t ask for his help, just starts pushing him around verbally. He says he doesn’t want to move, he likes his seat and he paid for it. She says, “You used miles to upgrade, and I’m giving your seat to the passengers in row 5. You will take their row.” (The other passengers were already on board, and had assigned seats in row 5, the seats THEY paid for. He says, “I did not use miles. I paid for the upgrade!” She says, “Either move, or get off the plane, those are your choices.”

Whut? Yep, she threatened him. Not once, but twice. “I said, move or leave the plane, those are your choices, which will it be?”

Now, why would she treat him like that? She could have been collaborative. She could have been polite. She could have made a request instead of a threat. She could have told the other passengers there was nothing she could do. He wasn’t behaving badly, wasn’t bothering anyone, played by their rules, paid for their upgrade. I can think of only a few reasons, none of which really make sense. Maybe they were friends of hers and she wanted to give them what they wanted. Or maybe she didn’t like the color of his skin. Or maybe she just needed to feel a little power today. Whatever. To my thinking, there really is no excuse. And while this kind of bad behavior is good for my book sales of “Dealing With People You Can’t Stand,” it’s bad for business. I have friends who are flight attendants. I’m sure they will find this as disturbing and inexcusable as I do. And yeah, he moved.

For me, this is yet another reminder of why I keep reducing my travel schedule. Instead of enjoying flying and booking more flights, I’m trying to eliminate air travel from my life as much as possible. Because I can’t stand how degrading it’s become. This flight attendant humiliated a passenger in first class. Wow, how the mighty have fallen. It’s just not fun to fly anymore. Maybe because I’m a frequent flyer, I hear more horror stories about UAL than any other airline. Or maybe they really are as bad as I think they’ve become. But I remember when flight attendants knew that the customer was the purpose of their work. This flight attendant abused her customer, plain and simple. She knows she has the power to ruin his life. And she is quite willing to do so. That’s a good strategy for alienating and losing customers. That is not a good strategy to keep people flying.

I’m a million miler on United Airlines, and for many years thought of them as MY airline. Those days are gone. I can’t quit flying soon enough. It’s the sole reason I’m retiring in a couple of years, I just can’t stand being a first hand witness to the devolution of a great industry. I hope that you will read and share this story. I hope that United Airlines looks into this, finds out the name of that flight attendant and makes her apologize to a very sweet man who did not deserve this. But will that happen? I pretty much doubt it. So hey, executives at United Airlines, do you care that these kinds of stories get told and passed along, staining your reputation with the ugly truth of the way you treat people? Do you care at all anymore about your reputation with the flying public? Or are you as unfriendly as this story makes you appear?

That flight attendant needs to know that she didn’t get away with this in the dark, that others now know what she did. The airline owes this gentleman and his wife an apology, or they’ve lost the business, plus the business of others who have had just enough of it.

And for you, dear reader, I invite you post your own stories in the comments section if you like. Particularly if they involve United Airlines (UA). #thatsnowaytotreatpeople, #UAUnfriendlySkies

I’m all for calling attention to BIG business. I’m really sensitive to how businesses treat customers, and wonder often about how management oversees (?) customer service. I’m actually in the process of notifying UA for a refund of $200 I had to pay for cancelling a trip. I cancelled because I was too sick to travel, but I unfortunately did not go to the doctor so I don’t have evidence that I was sick (except for the friend who brought me soup). The $200 was a” re-deposit fee” to add the miles back to my original miles. BIG business can be exhausting! Good for you for supporting this gentleman Rick Let us know how it goes~ :D

As far as I know (264k status miles on UA in 2014) any United Airlines plane that has a first class seat in row 3 has the economy section starting in row 7. So row 5 would also be in the front of the bus section.

That the person sharing the experience got the flight number wrong doesn’t make her or her husband a liar. It means they have trouble reading all the code on tickets, something that many occasional flyers struggle with. I am still waiting to get a corrected flight number. But the bigger issue here is that people have bad experiences on planes with flight attendants who ought to know better. So I’m not sure what smell test you are applying. I have a million and a half miles myself, and while rude flight attendants are not something I commonly experience, the veneer of friendly and polite often seems stripped away. I’d like the airlines to try a different approach to their business, one based on positive experiences and happy flyers instead of what we have now, which is the reverse. The flying experience is quite degraded from how it was when I started business travel 20 years ago.

The one additional detail I have is that row 5 didn’t recline, the people in row 5 wanted to move, and the flight attendant helped them at the expense of another traveler. Not all seats are created equal, and not all passengers are given the same attention. And that it required rude behavior of her towards him is the salient part of the tale. Still hoping to get the correct flight number…and I apologize for the misdirect.

First, forgive me if my resonating with the story emotionally got ahead of my thinking, and I stand corrected on the flight number.

Now to your specific comments: Smell test? I don’t know what you’re smelling. I do know the people I spoke with (the friend of the wife of the traveler, and the wife of the traveler) were freshly incensed over the husband’s treatment that very morning. Their story was unsolicited by me, I wasn’t telling a tale of woe about travel and someone piped in, I was relaxing over the best breakfast in town on a darn near heavenly vacation. I blogged about it because it offended me that a flight attendant would abuse their power, and because I’ve seen a few examples lately that lead me to believe the story as told. There is no cause for such bad behavior on airplane, and I jumped to the response of wanting to shame the flight attendant. I’ll add that I haven’t seen any badly behaved passengers in quite a while, which I think is a testament to what people can endure. As to your certainty about me that, ‘As a million miler, you could easily…’ Maybe you could. Not me. I wasn’t interested in fact checking flight details like some people, I simply was moved to report on a story as I heard it. In my reality, I’m in avoidance mode as much as possible with the travel industry, only paying attention to it only when my calendar gives me reminders that I have to. And I’m getting off the road now, limiting work that requires me to travel just to avoid the filth and unpleasantness that pervades airports and airplanes these days.

For what it’s worth, there is no seat 3E in the first class cabin on standard any United flight between Houston and Cancun. The only seats in the first class cabin on one of their 737-900 aircraft are lettered A/B on the left and C/D on the right. They only use single-aisle aircraft between those cities, so it doesn’t matter which model 737 or even 757 – still no ‘E’ seats in first class.

Also, UA1011 is a CUN-IAH flight, not IAH-CUN as your story implies (an, incidentally, is always operated by a 737-900).

Thanks for the comment. I’m hoping to get updated information from our friend whose friends these people are. But that people get the numbers wrong is no surprise. I have no doubt that the story we heard was sincere.

I have taken out the flight number, and appreciate the help in cleaning this up. Getting the facts straight is the challenge when people tell stories. Something untoward happened. A flight attendant seems to have abused her position, and a passenger is doing word of mouth advertising for the airline. I’ve witnessed a few such things, just yesterday I believe where I read about some innocent passenger emotionally roughed up by an airline. So thanks again for your comment.

For what it’s worth, there is no seat 3E in the first class cabin on any normal United flight between Houston and Cancun. The only seats in the first class cabin on one of their 737-900 aircraft are lettered A/B on the left and C/D on the right. They only use single-aisle aircraft between those cities, so it doesn’t matter which model 737 or even 757 – still no ‘E’ seats in first class.

Also, UA1011 is a CUN-IAH flight, not IAH-CUN as your story implies (an, incidentally, is always operated by a 737-900).

Thanks for the reply, Matt. I’m going off the info I heard. That the person and his wife have trouble with flight and seat numbers is not surprising. I’m a veteran flyer and I find anything involving paper and airlines to be obscure. But the outrage expressed, the bad feelings engendered, were real, and only shared with me because a mutual friend thought I would be interested, what with my book on dealing with people you can’t stand. I wasn’t there, so I don’t have better details. and I have no cause to doubt the sincerity or veracity of the people involved. I spoke to the wife of the passenger myself. The issue isn’t flight and seat numbers. The issue is the treatment of a passenger by a flight attendant.